Numerous packaging concepts are known in the prior art for displaying a wide variety of products in many different ways. The choice of a packaging concept depends greatly upon the way the packaged product is to be presented to the consumer in retail stores. Accordingly, many consumer articles are conventionally packaged and sold in packages known as “blister packs.” Blister packs allow the consumer to visually examine a packaged product before making a purchase.
Conventionally, a blister pack includes a card, usually formed of medium to heavy gauge cardboard. The card is secured to a piece of clear plastic which is formed to include a pocket or blister which projects outwardly from the plane of the card on one side of the card. Generally, the card from which the blister projects extends beyond the edge of the blister in length, width, or both, to provide space on which appropriate graphics and text can be printed. The graphics or text are used to draw a consumer's attention to the product in addition to describing the use of the product and its special features.
The blister portion of the blister pack can contain a single product item, such as a single cosmetic item, or the blister portion can contain multiple spaces for a plurality of items, such as screws, nails, thumbtacks, and other such items conventionally sold in bulk quantities.
While blister pack packaging provides a convenient method of displaying a product in a retail store, blister packs present difficulties involved in either storing or shipping packaged products. These difficulties result from the uneven geometric configuration and the uneven weight distribution in blister packs. The uneven geometric configuration and the uneven weight distribution prevent convenient stacking of blister packs. In addition, large volumes of blister packs in a carton can lead to difficulties in accurately counting the number of blister packs. If the blister packs are packed loosely in a carton for shipment, there is oftentimes damage to both the card portion and the blister portion of the blister pack. Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a packaging system which provides an orderly arrangement of packaged products during storage, shipment, and retail presentation so as to avoid the problems associated with blister packs.
Prior-art approaches to providing an orderly arrangement of blister packs have included the use of a rack for hanging blister packs and a shelf for supporting freestanding packages. While, in some types of packages, vertical support of the freestanding package may be provided by folded panels of paperboard or external structures, in certain other types of packages the support is provided by the blister material, either by itself or in cooperation with the paperboard to which the blister is attached.
Certain prior-art vertically self-supporting blister pack display packages have been provided with a supporting structure integrally formed at the bottom of the blister pack. These supporting structures may include one or more bottom, flat surface(s) formed into the clear plastic blister material, wherein the surface or surfaces are sufficiently large to maintain the entire package in a vertical orientation. In packages of this type, the vertical orientation of the package is maintained independently of the paperboard back panel to which the clear plastic blister material is secured.
Supporting structures may take the form of one or more foot-type protrusion(s) of the blister material. This construction provides vertical support through cooperative action between the protrusion(s) and other parts of the package. Both the surface-support and foot-support type packages require additional blister material to form the necessary structure. This construction generally increases the complexity and cost of the packages.
Even in the relatively simple foot-support type packages, the supporting foot and the blister material connected to the body of the package must be relatively thick to be strong enough to support the weight of certain products. For products above a certain weight, foot-support type packages have proven to be unsatisfactory. Additionally, because of the inherent downwardly directed angle of the foot relative to the base of the blister pack in some packages, some blister packs do not easily lend themselves to automated display package assembly. Additionally, if the vertical orientation is to be maintained by the cooperative action of the foot and the paperboard back, slight displacements in the positioning of the blister on the paperboard will result in non-vertical packages.
Accordingly, a problem remains in the art for a system that arranges product packages in an orderly manner for storage, shipment, and retail presentation.